Letters to the Editor

Although I agree with U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Diane S.
Ravitch's statement that "this has been 20 years of remarkable change''
for women ("National Groups Promise Steps To Combat Inequities for
Girls,'' Feb. 19, 1992), I cannot agree with her assertion that
gender-equity programs are no longer needed. Empowering environments
are needed for adolescent females now more than ever.

The progress that has been made toward gender equity has had one
negative side effect: As women prove that they can do and have it all,
they create an expectation of achievement which becomes increasingly
intimidating to the next generation. My experience working at an
all-girls school has shown me time and again that female students need
the kind of environment we provide. We must assuage their fears about
being able to live up to the new stereotype of the successful
woman.

As a single-sex school, we have the research, the programs, and the
resources to show our students that they can have fulfilling lives as
leaders, scholars, athletes, and friends. We are motivated by the one
goal we hold above all others: to provide young women with exceptional
training, for college and after.

Empowerment and equal access should not be benefits available only
to the few. Most young women in the United States today will not have
access to the resources that Madeira and other girls' schools have to
offer. But during the crucial adolescent years, when vital qualities
like self-esteem begin to erode, any type of single-sex experience can
help prevent that almost irreversible damage.

Teenage girls should be encouraged to join the Girl Scouts, an
all-girls church group, an intramural sports team--any kind of
activity, as long as it provides a single-sex environment with strong
female leadership. The opportunity to learn self-sufficiency,
problem-solving, teamwork, and consensus-building with intelligent,
caring role models can reverse, or at least diminish, the effects of
bias in a coed classroom.

Meanwhile, it is imperative that the U.S. Education Department share
with the National Coalition of Girls Schools the common goal of
educating and preparing girls for life, for participation in the
workforce, for parenting and volunteering and care-giving. The
department must attempt to reach the girls that we cannot. A majority
segment of the population is in danger.

Jennifer Jackson Salopek
Madeira School
McLean, Va.

To the Editor:

The news that the Council of Independent Colleges wants to accredit
its own education programs ("Revamped NCATE Posts Highs, Lows In Tides
of Teacher-Education Reform,'' Feb. 26, 1992) is disquieting. "Two
organizations'' means "two sets of standards,'' and one must be
inferior to the other. Those certified by the inferior gain the
opportunity to stigmatize themselves and the duty of convincing others
that they aren't stigmatized. Either activity undermines high standards
by confusing them with an imitation.

If independent colleges have their own accreditation process, why
not research universities or the Renaissance Group? Proliferation
doesn't lead merely to balkanization, but to a vacuum which invites
filling. Others could accredit preparation programs, with considerable
power through local hiring processes. If programs are uncomfortable
about co-operating with one another now, they may soon be more
uncomfortable about not co-operating with one another.

Each time NCATE raises its standards, there's a reaction from those
to whom the standards apply. This time, budgets are leaner, so the
reaction is greater. But the answer is still the same: Make NCATE work.
A single credible process promotes professionalism; balkanization
destroys it. To make teaching a profession equal to others, the center
needs to hold.

Who gains by destroying accreditation? The presidents and provosts
who are not supporting it now. Faced with new standards, they move to
eliminate those seeking improvements. In the clash between
institutional and professional cultures, our stewards choose
corporatism. This is a far greater threat to the academy than the
desire for better practice through higher standards of preparation.

It was refreshing to see Harold Williams's point of view on arts
education ("Why Ignore Arts Education In Our Reforms?'' Commentary,
Feb. 26, 1992) being given prominent attention in your publication. We
who are involved in the arts and public education often feel alone in
the battle to remain a viable part of the American education
system.

I think it is important to clarify that Mr. Williams is speaking
about the Arts, with a capital A. Although his affiliation, through the
Getty Trust, is primarily art education, his essay could have been
written about music education, dance education, or theater arts. I
believe he would agree that this is a time for people in arts education
to act together in stressing the importance of understanding the many
avenues of human expression.

I know that in music education, for example, researchers, thinkers,
and leaders in the field have worked and are working on exciting and
meaningful ways to improve the structure of music teaching and
learning. Work in philosophy, in esthetics, in skill development, and
in performance have all contributed to a sound body of educational
organization and methods to enhance instruction in a variety of
settings.

Mr. Williams challenges us to be outspoken advocates for the arts.
In addition, I believe we must take the time to understand that the
arts encompass unique types of human expression available to us that
have been and will continue to be important in the future. If arts
educators can realize together the uniqueness of their contributions,
the commonality of their specialties, and the great strength they could
have as an organized and articulate group, I feel an impact could be
made on the people who shape the destiny of our schools.

Only through extraordinary cooperation, however, will the full force
of the principles and ideas of arts education be allowed to generate
the power necessary to convince all those concerned with education that
the arts are basic. I hope someone in Washington is really listening to
people like Harold Williams--for the sake of our country, our schools,
and our children.

I hope arts educators are listening, too, so that they may recognize
and understand the important position they hold in our society and our
future.

Raymond Pettit
Katonah-Lewisboro School District
Katonah, N.Y.

To the Editor:

Anna L. Heatherly's letter ("Teachers Are Key to Making Whole
Language a Success,'' Letters, Feb. 26, 1992) offers more confusion
than clarity in the debate between phonics and whole language.

She writes that phonics "is a part of the skill activities involved
in whole language.'' That, indeed, is true. But what she doesn't point
out is that there is a great deal of difference between teaching
phonetic clues as a means of reducing poor guessing in a
configurational, holistic reading program like whole language, and
teaching intensive, systematic phonics as the principal means of
decoding alphabetic writing.

Nor does she point out that the teaching of phonetic clues are
undercut by encouraging children to substitute words. Kenneth Goodman
himself has said it is perfectly all right if a child substitutes the
word pony for horse because the child has gotten "the meaning.'' That
hardly helps a child learn to use his phonetic clues.

Miss Heatherly then states that she wishes that "phonics was the
solution to having every child read.'' But then she claims that this
teaching of phonics "has been going on for years and the end result is
that we have hundreds of thousands of children who cannot read.''

Anyone familiar with the history of our reading problem would know
that it all started in the early 1930's when the professors of
education discarded intensive phonics and replaced it with whole-word
methodology. Rudolf Flesch's famous Why Johnny Can't Read, published in
1955, provides an excellent historical overview of the problem, and my
own book, The New Illiterates, published in 1973, revealed that the
originator of the whole-word, look-say method was none other than
Thomas H. Gallaudet, the famous teacher of the deaf and dumb.

While whole-language proponents like to give the impression that
their reading instruction program is something new, similar programs
were tried in progressive private schools in the early decades of this
century and found wanting.

The story referred to three articles from the Journal of Educational
Psychology without giving the details of those articles, leaving the
reader unclear of their meaning. The quotes from Kenneth Goodman, Frank
Vellutino, and Tom Nicholson also appear to me to be incomplete, that
is, out of context.

Whole language is a philosophy regarding learning to read, a belief
that learning to read is a developmental process and a part of language
development. Not every student requires the same teacher-directed
lessons in order to learn a skill or to understand a concept. Phonics
instruction is a method used in assisting students as they learn to
read.

Whole-language educators define reading as getting meaning from
print. A person who reads well has command of phonemes/graphemes,
semantics, and syntax. Whole-language educators do not discount the
teaching of phonics; our written language relies on a sound-symbol
system. Reading extends beyond the sound symbols, however, and the
reading teacher must be sure the students are able to understand the
written communication based, also, on the semantics and syntax of the
collection of words presented in the print.

Students may be able to identify words using phonics, but they still
may not be able to obtain the full meaning of the words in print. The
whole-language teacher helps his or her students learn to get meaning
from words when the words are placed in a variety of contexts for a
variety of purposes.

In his Commentary, "Does Public Mean Good,'' (Feb. 12, 1992),
arguing that public schools are to be avoided in the same way we
assiduously avoid public restrooms, Chester E. Finn Jr. advocates the
abandonment of a standard of the public good that has served to define
democratic ideals from the earliest emergence of the concept of
inalienable rights and responsibility for general welfare. By scorning
degraded public facilities of all kinds, he provides a singular
indictment of social contract run amok.

Indeed, as the gap between middle-class comfort and hanging on to a
tattered safety net grows ever wider, indifference to what is public
and poor intensifies. Mr. Finn's rhetoric promotes the discourse that
blames the victim and turns a contemptuous back to the homeless and the
helpless. His stature as a former federal official provides this
discourse with a stamp of propriety, when it implies instead a cynical
reluctance to address the deeper causes of poverty.

In fact, our government has made a conscious political choice to
contribute to the decay of public hospitals, public transportation, and
public schools by withdrawing resources and by utilizing media and
displays of self-righteous blaming of the disenfranchised to
rationalize the abandonment.

At the same time that other enlightened nations support and
subsidize public facilities to enhance the universal pursuit of
economic and social happiness, our government in the last decade has
elected to maintain a vision of private comfort and using the bottom
line as the measure of all institutions, even those ill suited to a
profit-and-loss paradigm. The example of a flawed health-delivery
system should be a warning of the problems associated with privatizing
human-services institutions.

Public facilities in many European nations suggest another model. We
once found pride in our great museums and libraries as public
"places,'' comparable to those that grace the capitals of Europe. These
were institutions whose mission was to uplift all the people and to
shape the aspirations of new immigrants as they found their way into
productive citizenship.

By abandoning the notion of the public good we relegate a large and
ever increasing number of Americans to a permanent underclass with
little opportunity to glimpse improved possibilities for their lives.
Mr. Finn's advocacy of "choice'' condemns public education to the same
deplorable conditions as the public restroom. Another choice can be
made by our government, a commitment to funding educational and other
public institutions at a level that fosters compassion and virtue in
the public good.

Frances G. Wills
Union, Me.

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